Kyle Busch's 225th Win Was One Of His Finest
The winningest NASCAR driver ever* showed he hasn't lost a step.
Don’t say I didn’t warn everyone.
On a new team that clearly seemed poised to win soon, at a track where he was among the most successful ever, it didn’t take long for Kyle Busch to deliver on his strong potential this year and win the Pala Casino 400 Sunday in California. And as I said last week about the implications of a Rowdy run in Fontana:
Don’t be surprised if [Busch] uses the result as a springboard to something great this season.
The victory even marked a nice, round milestone number of sorts. It was Busch’s 225th total win across all three of NASCAR’s national series — the Cup series, Xfinity series and Truck series — extending his all-time career lead over No. 2, King Richard Petty.
Busch’s total-wins record has always been a subject of funny fascination for me, as it clearly does not mean his career is greater than Petty’s (or David Pearson’s, Jeff Gordon’s, Darrell Waltrip’s or any of the other leaders for the Cup series alone). Busch padded his victory tally with a whopping 102 Xfinity wins and 62 more in the Trucks, making him NASCAR’s greatest “Buschwhacker” — a derisive term for Cup Series drivers who soak up wins while slumming it in lower series:
There are reasons why big-time drivers would Buschwhack. (The term actually predates Kyle Busch; it is so named because the Xfinity Series used to be named the Busch Series, after the beer company.) Track time is precious, and using another series for live practice undeniably helps a driver prepare for a subsequent Cup Series race on the same track. It also got easier to pull double-duty after the NASCAR schedule was adjusted in the early 2000s such that most Busch Series races were companions to a Cup Series race. And from a promoter’s viewpoint, having bigger names in your lower-tier race is a better draw, even if it comes at the expense of development for up-and-coming drivers.
Although NASCAR started cracking down on the practice in the 2010s, stars will still show up in the odd lower-level race even to this day. And naturally, nobody Buschwhacked better than the Candy Man himself, KFB.
Sunday’s win, though, was orchestrated against the best the sport has to offer. In his new Richard Childress Racing No. 8 car, Busch drove hard to the front of the pack and stayed there until the checkered flag. In the process, he proved that his departure from Joe Gibbs Racing didn’t mean the end of his time as a winner. The rest of the Cup Series — and, occasionally, the lower-tier series as well — had better watch out.
Filed under: NASCAR